Australian poverty rate hits 13.9 per cent, ACOSS report shows

MORE than 2.5 million Australians are now living below the poverty line, according to a major new report by the Australian Council of Social Services.

The report, to be released today, will show that in the past two years, a quarter of a million more Australians have fallen into poverty, raising the national poverty rate to 13.9 per cent.

The situation is substantially worse among Australian children, with 17.7 per cent of kids across the country living below the OECD poverty line, and more than one in three children living in sole parent households are in poverty.

In Australia, the poverty line equates to living on less than $400 a week for a single adult or $841 for a couple with two children.

ACOSS chief executive Cassandra Goldie said the findings of the report are alarming and “highlight the need for a national plan to tackle the scourge of poverty”.

“It is unacceptable that after 20 years of economic growth our wealthy nation is going backwards in the numbers of people falling into poverty,” Ms Goldie said.

“These findings paint a disturbing picture that we as a community need to confront if we are to reverse the spreading disparity we are seeing on the ground in the daily lives of people across the country,” she said.

Across the country, there are more people living in poverty in Tasmania than any other state, with the island state’s poverty rate toppling 15 per cent.

This is followed by Queensland, where the poverty rate is 14.8 per cent, then New South Wales at 14.6 per cent, Victoria at 13.9 per cent, Western Australia at 12.4 per cent and South Australia, which has a poverty rate of just 11.7 per cent.

Women are significantly more likely to be living below the poverty line than men, with 14.7 per cent of Australian women experiencing poverty, compared to 13 per cent of men.

Welfare recipients are most at risk of living in poverty, with more than half of all Newstart recipients living below the poverty line.

Just under half of all recipients of the Disability Support Pension are also living in poverty, as are a quarter of the Australians receiving the carers payment and 15 per cent of those receiving the age pension.

Ms Goldie said the report shines a light on the “sheer inadequacy” of the welfare system.

She also said it emphasised the danger posed by the Abbott government’s first budget, which would reduce the indexation of pension payments to the Consumer Price Index only.

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